to the, [000:00:00;00] the i'm action or 10 seen. welcome back to going underground and the final show of this season after we've witness genocide in this region through the eyes of scholars, politicians and john les couldn't algorithm help the we'll do it tomorrow. catastrophe. the mathematical procedure shows algorithm, promises do 8 solutions to jo, politics, hunger disease, climate change even if it may leave the door open for cyber attack on the world's nuclear weapon systems. naturally laid capitalism is investing in it because it leads can, honestly, algorithm for the parasitical financial services industry to create will beating

investment strategies. political groups meanwhile, could use it to break the encryption on global bank transactions. the formula is shows algorithm its creator is the professor professor of applied mathematics and m i t p to show he joins me now from cambridge, massachusetts, in the usa process. your thanks so much for coming on alarming that the entire financial system relying on electronic bank payment transactions, nuclear codes, c i a file encryption, ms files. they might be good though for a mid sin and yours for pandemic sin diseases. a lot of a lot of stuff is invested in show as algorithm named off to you. i added simplest . what is yours algorithm, or? so source algorithm is a way of factoring large numbers using a quantum computer. so quantum computers are these hypothetical devices,

which so far are only you only have very preliminary prototypes that show that they will work, but the prototypes are so small, they can't actually do anything useful yet. but if you know, if they keep on growing the way they have been in the last 20 years, probably in the next 10 or 20 years, that will be able to do useful things. and what shows algorithm is actually, it's a way of factoring large numbers, which needs quantum computers. there's no rush that claims it as a 52 bit quantum computer. by the end of the year, there was a russian $116.00 at the end of 20, very 3. ibm says they go to $1121.00 cubic cubic being a unit, a like binary for the old, for your laptops, binary switches inside be inside your laptop. explain exactly what a quantum computer is,

because most people think of their own computers. switching on and off and it's loads of these, which is that simulate uh sums that make graphics and games and all the other things that you do on your computer. yeah, so uh to bit is, uh, well, it's basically a quantum binary um switch, which means either it's 0 or one. the think about cubits as they know if they have a classical bed, it's either 0 or it's one. and there is no in between or cubits. uh, cubic can be in a superposition of both 0 and $1.00 at the same time. so it's got a sub has the option, as well as more than a 3rd option. that's a whole continuum of options. and you know, you, at 1st of all, you say, well, what's the use of it being and supervision, and 01 the same time. what can you do with it? well,

the interesting thing is that there are algorithms you can do using cubits that you cannot do on a single computer. and one of these is the one i discovered called stories algorithm edits for factoring large numbers and 2 primes. ok, so we may have to go through another stage before we fully get it to your algorithm . then because the other day microsoft was saying, you figured out a way of error correction in these quantum computers. because if you're going to get a continuum rather than a discrete 0 and a one of the whole point of a laptops is they have systems in there because there's always a mistake going to happen. and there's a way of correcting it. i thought the whole point of quantum mechanics and you might have to explain that to split experiments as well, is that when you identify

a particle, you change where it's at. so in your a quantum computer, when you find out where the switch is, you all to where the switch is. yeah, that's right. so um, when quantum computers 1st came out, um, you know, the general consensus was that you would never be able to build these things because they were impossible to correct arrows on. and no quantum mechanics is such a delicate 3 that there is no way of building a quantum computer that will do gates that are absolutely here are free. i mean, we still think this is true that you can never build a problem computer with gates that are free, but what's different is that we figured out a way of correcting the errors. so quantum mechanics, if you measure something,

you change it state. so if you major the state of a bottom, peter, in the middle of a computation, the state will collapse and then the computation will no longer be valid, you valid? so how can you measure errors without correcting them? and if you don't measure errors, how can you possibly know whether you have an error and correct? so the solution to this was to come up with a way of encoding the state of a quantum computer so that you can measure at the error without major in the state that the computer is actually. yeah. and then once you've done that, you know what the error is, you have a distributed computation because you didn't measure the state of the computation, you just measured the state of the error. so now you can correct the error i

continue on is usually error related to where this is. well, not if you do it right. if you do it right, there's a state of computation which is protected by the front of aircraft and code. and that are the errors which apply to the cubits, but do not change the state of the one i'm computer. now, if you have a big enough error, so suppose, you know, suppose you have an error correcting code, you can have an error correcting codes to allow to you to correct safe by the errors at once. but if you have one of these and you get 7 errors, then that is going to change the state of your quantum computer. but if you have a 5 error code and you only get 5 errors, then you're fine. you're correct the errors and keep on with the computation. okay, well back to the algorithm. then we're not advising people who have access to nuclear weapon systems to investigate, to show us how good them, uh,

with respect to them. but at the moment, with normal computers, you can break into the c, i a or whatever, because of cryptography. why? what is, what are the reasons why you can't break into a code, say that edward snowden released to the world, that we were all being bugged, or whatever he had access to the documents, to break into the documents, you'd have to require the length of the life of the universe, so something to be able to break into it. why is that group dog are free so strong? but why is it's a week in the face of your algorithm? so i guess before around 1975 or so if you know, if you had, if you wanted to predict the secret and you wanted to communicate by so good code to somebody else you needed to have gotten together with the other person and

exchange the secret key and if you both have the secret key, then you can, one person can encode the message using the secret key and the other person can decode it is what, what side of the telegram and facebook messenger, all the social media apps used today as much i think yeah, but, but they, um, but you know, it's, it's really cumbersome and awkward and it's expensive to exchange secret keys with everyone you're communicating with. so 3 people, i guess we're best should be, are in edelman. i figured out how to exchange messages without using secret keyes that both people know and these are called public key clip of systems . and they are basically the basis of most communication today.

i don't know that whether they're used for protecting nuclear secrets and things like that, but i know banks how many um, you know, why are they so secure this process? okay, so there's so secure because um, if you suppose you have to prime numbers like 11 and the 17, i can take eleven's and 17 and multiply them together and get 187. but suppose i give you 100 p, so it's much more complicated to take 187 and factor it and learn it. so 11 times 17, actually with 187. it's not so complicated. but if you had a 100 digit product primes, it's much more complicated had if you have a 300 digit product of primes,

the fastest computers in the world don't know how to do it efficiently. so and what the rest should be or in hillman did was they came up with a code so that in order to encode something, you can multiply 2 number 2 prime numbers together and get their product and use that as the basis of the criptos system. but to decrypt the system without knowing the 2 factors that gave rise to this prime, you need to factor with this large number into primes. and that is, you know, basically impossible for computers today. so this is why our essays use so much. now i show that if you have a quantum computer, you can factor numbers much more efficiently than on a classical computer. so the number of steps on the bottom computer per factoring

a large number is essentially not much more than the number of steps it takes to take 2 numbers to get to take 2 numbers and most buy them together to get this large number. so that means that you hope you have quantum computers and i say publicly cryptography is no longer secure. and before anyone thinks that this is just a break into secret codes, even if it is in the public interest. the factoring in the primes of big numbers is an important concept in the whole of life on a even genomes, dna proteins and met. i think you got that

a little bit wrong. so factoring large numbers into primes is really, is not very important. the scheme of things, what is important is that quantum computers can solve quantum mechanics problems very quickly. and you may not think that's important, but when you realize that, you know, chemistry is a quantum mechanical problem. designing drugs is a quantum mechanical problem. building new superconductors that start conducting a larger temperatures than ever before is a quantum mechanical problem. and if you could solve those quantum mechanical problems, you could really make great strides in our knowledge and as useful um technology and other things, progressively visual. i'll stop you the more from the world when and computer

scientists and divisor of shows algorithm off of this by the when i 1st moved to rush i, one of the most amazing things i found was to moscow metro. in fact, at the very 1st phrase that i ever learned and nothing was closing. so what makes this place so specially what secrets is of hiding to find out deep under the city with alexander, pop on, even historian who studies the wonders of the moscow metro. the 1941 with the nazis help relation ultram nationalist. the was dashes, the claim, the independent state of croatia. shortly on the seizing power,

they built the scene of us concentration camp. a place associated with the worst atrocities committed in yugoslavia during will go to use dash is used to come system to isolate and exterminate subs, roma, jews, and other non catholic minorities and political opponents of the fascist regime. conditions in the san of us come with her renders the gods tortured to arise and the prisoners they send them a consultation temps. so most of them died. it was incredible genocide. the welcome back to going underground. i'm still here with the award winning can be